"Berlin", Cyprus : photography, simulation, and the directed gaze in a divided city

Abstract

The "end" of Heroes Street in Nicosia, previously one of its main arteries but now a cul-de-sac with an artificial dead-end, is a site which encapsulates some of the basic themes in the recent political history of Cyprus. At the end of the street is a raised military observation post with the message "Nothing is gained without sacrifices, nor freedom without blood". Tourists and visiting Cypriots from other towns take photographs of the Green Line/Dead Zone beyond, an area left abandoned by the 1974 Turkish Invasion, now patrolled by UN forces. To the right of the platform is a sign: "Nicosia: The Last Divided Capital of Europe". In a room below the sign are photographs of destruction from the invasion together with a book for visitors to write their comments in, the majority of which are by Greeks and Greek Cypriots. The photographs show refugees, destroyed churches, and mutilated bodies hanging out of bombed buildings. Outside there is a life-size, free-standing, thick metal plate sculpture, with the outline of a figure cut out of it. The title of the sculpture is "O Ayvoouμevoc;" (The Missing Person). This is a powerful work designed not for tourists but for Greek Cypriots, because of its monolingual Greek title. One looks through it - there is nothing to see, except that very fact. The sculpture is literally a silhouette. As a sculpture it is analogous to purchasing a mystery jigsaw puzzle in a plain box, and discovering that it consists only of the pieces that constitute the outer frame. It is a subversive work because it plays upon the tension of completeincompleteness, of either having had its content removed, or of never having had that content in the first place, and thus representing a category. If it is a category whose category is it?